I tried edible marijuana and felt nothing

By now, just about everyone has heard of Maureen Dowd’s ill-fated experiment with edible marijuana — that is, the night of paranoid hallucination that followed her devouring of a cannabis-spiked candy bar in Colorado. As the New York Times columnist observed: “I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing…I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.”

So, when I visited Colorado some months later — to report on a cannabis trade conference, appropriately enough — I thought I’d put edible pot to the Dowd test. Would I have the same long, strange and unpleasant trip? Or would I enjoy the mellow buzz that is the supposed quintessence of cannabis?

As it turned out, I experienced neither. In fact, I experienced nothing.

I’ve been thinking about my experience — or non-experience, as it were — in light of a new warning from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about the “potential danger” of marijuana edibles. (The report is tied to the death of a 19-year-old man who consumed a marijuana cookie, started acting erratically and eventually jumped off a hotel balcony.) On top of that there was a recent report from the Journal of the American Medical Association that showed marijuana edibles are often labeled inaccurately, with potency levels sometimes way less than what’s listed. And yet, this hasn’t seemingly stopped cannabis consumers from embracing edibles. In Colorado, the first state to fully legalize pot, some 4.8 million edible marijuana products were sold in 2014. The “strong demand” for these items, as a state report described it, seemed to take industry watchers by surprise. (Isn’t pot all about smoking?).

Which brings me back to my story. I had never tried marijuana in edible form, so I was more than a little curious. (And again, I was visiting a state where I could legally satisfy that curiosity.) The first thing that struck me when I went to make a purchase at a dispensary was just how many options I had: candies, cookies, even something called “Groovy Granola.” But it was hard to get a handle on which product would be the right fit — meaning I hoped to try something that would get me high but not, well, Maureen Dowd high. Granted, I knew a lot depended on the amount ingested, but that was my very concern: I wanted the relationship between the portion size and the likely result to be abundantly clear. (Dowd got tripped up — pardon the pun — by how many squares of a candy bar it would take to have the requisite effect.)

On the advice of the dispensary I visited, I went with an item called Dew Drops, a marijuana “tincture” that’s essentially cannabis in a concentrated liquid form. (It came courtesy of Dixie Elixirs & Edibles, a Colorado company that’s a leader in the burgeoning biz of edibles and was recently ranked as the fourth most important enterprise in the cannabis industry. The product instructions said to place the dropper under my tongue, take a small dose (the bottle contained close to 10 servings, but I was advised by the dispensary to err on the safe side in portioning) and wait for my high. “The effects should be felt within 15-60 minutes,” says the Dixie Elixirs site.

I did just that and took an instant liking to the taste of the drops (I went with the spearmint flavor, though the watermelon was equally tempting). But instead of feeling mellow (or paranoid), I got the same kind of buzz I get from drinking a couple of O’Doul’s. (“Wait, isn’t that a non-alcoholic beer?” you ask. Precisely.)

Still, I didn’t give up. I took another hit (er, drop) after a safe period of waiting. And again, I came up blank in the buzz department. So, I repeated the process a third time. For a few seconds, I thought something was starting to kick in, but then I realized it was just that end-of-day sensation otherwise known as sleepiness. I hit my hotel room bed feeling tired but thoroughly sober.

And the next night? I tried the experiment all over again — with the same outcome.

I know I could have broken the rules and swigged the whole bottle, but that’s how Dowd got herself into trouble. Additionally, the dispensary had all but insisted that caution was in order — they even gave me an “Edibles Education” card, created by the Cannabis Business Alliance, that offered various pointers. Chief among them: “Start low. Go slow.”

The result? I got the anti-Dowd effect. But when you think about it, I had the same problem as Dowd in that I couldn’t get a handle on the correct dosage. Dowd ended up feeling like a zombie. I ended up feeling like I got ripped off (the drops cost me 20 bucks). But it’s an issue either way.

And it’s an issue that the cannabis industry — and the state governments that oversee it — has had to start addressing. Already, Colorado has taken some key steps this year by putting a series of regulations into place governing the packaging, labeling and potency of edibles. For example, the state now requires that products be demarked “in a way that enables a reasonable person to intuitively determine how much of the product constitutes a single serving.”

Sure enough, if I made my purchase after those regulations became the law of the land, I might have had a better understanding of how much of that spearmint-flavored concentrate I needed to ingest to get high (but again, not Maureen Dowd high). When I bought the drops, I had a difficult time deducing the proper measures and quantities, but now there’s a line on the dropper that denotes a 3 milligram serving of THC, the chemical in cannabis responsible for your high. Since the state considers 10 milligrams a standard dosage, the math becomes pretty simple. In other words, you need at least three droppers’ worth to get, well, your money’s worth (notwithstanding the fact that tolerance levels vary from person to person). I was so under the limit I might as well have been drinking H20.

But why didn’t Dixie Elixirs make everything clearer in the first place? Dixie Elixirs spokesman Joe Hodas says the company is learning through experience what it needs to convey so consumers better understand the products they’re ingesting. Hodas also says that changes in the Dew Drops packaging — like the line on the dropper — weren’t made just to appease state regulators; they were being planned in any case to simplify things. “It’s an evolution,” he says of the company’s process of figuring out how to package edibles.

Regardless of changes to packaging, consumers may need to do their own version of trial-and-error, says Jordan Wellington, an attorney with Vicente Sederberg, a national law firm that specializes in the cannabis industry. After all, it’s not like everyone is born with the knowledge of how many beers — or shots of tequila — are too many, Wellington argues. So just as you learn a few hard lessons when you begin your drinking life (remember that first hangover?), you may need to learn a few hard lessons when it comes to marijuana.

On top of that, Wellington believes that as edibles become more mainstream — indeed, as marijuana becomes more mainstream (in its legal form, it’s already a multibillion-dollar industry) — consumers will become naturally savvier about portions and potency. Marijuana isn't yet fully part of our vernacular, but that’s not to say it won’t ever be.

All fair points, but I’d be lying if I said I was fully convinced. While cannabis advocates will say the risks of over-consumption are relatively minor, opponents of marijuana legalization make the case that pot isn't so harmless.

As Dowd noted, there are cases involving injury — and even death — connected to the consumption of marijuana edibles, though at least one medical expert, British neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt, has likened the dangers of cannabis to the risks associated with “sport, sex, saunas and even straining on the toilet.” (Meanwhile, excess drinking is responsible for 88,000 deaths a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)

Putting the pot-vs.-alcohol debate aside, Colorado is obviously making strides in helping consumers understand the state’s signature new product in any case. But what about other states, including those not yet aboard the cannabis train? If there’s a real lesson to be learned from my experience — and Maureen Dowd’s — it’s that there’s a lot about pot (or at least the packaging of pot) our country needs to learn. Ignorance isn’t bliss. Or even a mellow buzz, as I came to realize from my time in Colorado.

Ultimately, though, it’s a free country — or at least a free state if you live in one of the 23 states where marijuana has been approved for medical and/or recreational use. (And don’t forget our nation’s capital, either.) States can shape the laws governing how cannabis is packaged and sold, but consumers can do what they please. Cigarettes come with warning labels, but that hardly stops smokers from smoking. Who’s to say everyone will follow the directions they’re given for a marijuana-spiked candy bar?

Regardless, I have to admit that I regret missing out on experiencing that Rocky Mountain high. Maybe a return research trip to Colorado is in order.

Mortgage Rates

Powered by

This advertisement is provided by Bankrate, which compiles rate data from more than 4,800 financial institutions. Bankrate is paid by financial institutions whenever users click on display advertisements or on rate table listings enhanced with features like logos, navigation links, and toll free numbers. Dow Jones receives a share of these revenues when users click on a paid placement.

Intraday Data provided by SIX Financial Information and subject to terms of use.
Historical and current end-of-day data provided by SIX Financial Information.
All quotes are in local exchange time. Real-time last sale data for U.S. stock quotes reflect trades reported through Nasdaq only.
Intraday data delayed at least 15 minutes or per exchange requirements.